The Whittingdale…affair

I mostly avoid politics on Facebook; too much of a cesspit most of the time. I do follow fellow and soon to be co-ex councillor Adam White who recently came to speak to my Journalism students about politics, social media and user generated content (thank you Adam).

After listening to the positively nauseating and weak interviewing on this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Today programme about the John Whittingdale errr, affair, he posted this which he has given me permission to reblog (thank you Adam). My mother was raging about the coverage as we went out for coffee (rare time together); I read out Adam’s post and she cheered.

“I couldn’t care less about what politicians get up to in the bedroom or who they do it with, but here are some things I do care about.

1: The fact that a Conservative minister, who is a member of an internal grouping which proclaims its belief in “faith, flag, and family”, lives by different standards than those he tries to impose on the rest of us in his role as a lawmaker.

2: The fact that someone who, at the time had an important role scrutinising a certain industry, was going on extravagant junkets paid for by said industry and then failing to properly declare them.

3: The fact that the media chose to ignore a story that they would normally run and that the subject of that story just so happened to be the Secretary of State with responsibility for press regulation, and the very same person who was undermining proposals that the big newspaper bosses have been fighting tooth and nail.

This is basically a really great example of how corruption actually manifests itself and undermines our democracy.”